30 Million People Lost Their Healthcare in the Dead of Night

Why is that important here? Remember this "Health Law Expanded Coverage For Ex-Inmates, But Gaps Remain," now they have lost that coverage!

1-13-17 National:

And odds are, no one will remember how it happened.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Wednesday night began cute, with folks talking about "Vote-a-Rama" with the Senate sitting in session well into Thursday morning, and rookie Republican Senator Todd Young sending snack food to the press gallery. It gradually became less cute as the night became the morning. The Democratic minority kept offering amendment after amendment, all of which failed by the narrow margin by which the Republicans control the Senate.

Then, around one o'clock in the morning, the actual mugging occurred, and millions of Americans awoke to the news that their newly acquired healthcare—and the newly acquired peace of mind that came with it—was going up in smoke.

The key moment came at about one in the morning when Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, withdrew his amendment that would have pushed the process of repealing the Affordable Care Act back to the beginning of March. Defenders of the law had set great store by the Corker amendment, which seemed to indicate that the Republican majority was both a) afraid to stand the gaff that will come when people lose their healthcare, and b) realizing that repealing the ACA without a viable replacement would cause actual chaos. That unicorn died in the dead of night. ..Continue.. by Charles P. Pierce

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Health Law Expanded Coverage For Ex-Inmates, But Gaps Remain

9-20-2016 National:

Insurance expansion in the early stages of the Affordable Care Act’s implementation boosted coverage for ex-prisoners but still left substantial gaps among a population with high rates of mental illness and chronic diseases such as hepatitis and diabetes, new research shows.

As expected, the health law’s 2014 expansion of Medicaid coverage for the poor was linked to higher insurance rates among those on parole or probation, and others with recent involvement with the criminal justice system.

The large majority of ex-prisoners are eligible for Medicaid in states that opted to expand it, experts say.

Another portion of the health law was also associated with substantial, and perhaps surprising, increased coverage for released prisoners.

After 2010, when the law required employer medical plans to cover dependents up to age 26, the portion of young adult ex-inmates without insurance fell from 40 percent to 32 percent.

Presumably many of them got coverage through their parents’ job-based plans, said Dr. Tyler Winkelman, a researcher at the University of Michigan and the lead author of the study, published Monday in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

“It’s a fascinating finding,” he said. “This could be a really important way that justice-involved individuals get insurance coverage, because so many of them are younger than 26.”

Policymakers see the health law as a way to connect millions of ex-prisoners to care, cut recidivism and save money by reducing expensive visits to hospital emergency rooms, which are often the provider of last resort for the uninsured.

But coverage is still far from universal. Nineteen states haven’t expanded Medicaid. Among those that have, prisons and jails are doing a spotty job of enrolling released prisoners.

As of 2014, the first year of the Medicaid expansion, 30.7 percent of ex-inmates and other justice-involved people were still uninsured, according to the researchers’ analysis of a national survey on drug use and health. The rate had previously hovered around 40 percent.

Newer figures may show continued increases in coverage among released prisoners, Winkelman said.

Several states have expanded Medicaid since 2014. Plus, he said, “I would assume that as more jails and prisons are coming online with programs, they’ll enroll more people.” ..Source.. by Jay Hancock

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Jails Enroll Inmates in Obamacare to Pass Hospital Costs to U.S.

2-7-2014 Illinois, National:

Being arrested in Chicago for, say, drug possession or assault gets you sent to the Cook County Jail to be fingerprinted, photographed and X-rayed. You’ll also get help applying for health insurance.

At least six states and counties from Maryland to Oregon’s Multnomah are getting inmates coverage under Obamacare and its expansion of Medicaid, the federal and state health-care program for the poor. The fledgling movement would shift to the federal government some of the more than $6.5 billion in annual state costs for treating prisoners. Proponents say it also will make recidivism rarer, because inmates released with coverage are more likely to get treatment for mental illness, substance abuse and other conditions that can lead them to crime.

“When someone gets discharged from the jail and they don’t have insurance and they don’t have a plan, we can pretty much set our watch to when we’re going see them again,” said Ben Breit, a spokesman for the Cook County Sheriff’s Office.

The still-small programs could reach a vast population: At the end of 2012, almost 7 million people in the U.S. were on parole, probation, in prison or locked up in jail, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. About 13 million people are booked into county jails each year, according to the Washington-based National Association of Counties.

Healthier Felons

Obamacare replaced a hodgepodge of state requirements that typically excluded childless adults from Medicaid. The 2010 law opened it to anyone making less than 138 percent of the federal poverty level, about $16,000 for an individual. In the 25 states that expanded the program under the Affordable Care Act, eligibility extends to many of the people most apt to be in jail or prison, said Fred Osher, director of health services and systems policy for the New York-based Council of State Governments Justice Center.

Governments generally must provide prisoners health care. Medicaid can’t be used, except when inmates are hospitalized off site 24 hours or longer. That lets a state or county pass on costs for such things as heart surgery or a stay in a psychiatric facility.

Medicaid expansion also enables more prisoners to have coverage when they are released. States that don’t expand it can help inmates get subsidized coverage in the insurance exchanges created under the law when they’re released.

Counties in about half the states are responsible for some level of indigent care at hospitals, so getting inmates enrolled can reduce costs, said Paul Beddoe, deputy legislative director for the National Association of Counties.

Extra Sick

Cook County has been operating a pilot project to enroll prisoners in Medicaid since April under a federal waiver, while states including Connecticut, Illinois and Maryland and counties such as Multnomah, which includes Portland, have helped hundreds of prisoners apply for coverage under the Affordable Care Act since it took effect Jan. 1. California, Ohio, San Francisco and other jurisdictions are starting programs or considering them.

About 90 percent of inmates are uninsured, and many have never had treatment for their illness, Osher said. They have disproportionate rates of communicable and chronic diseases and behavioral disorders, he said. About 488,000 people in U.S. prisons and jails suffer from a mental illness, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Arlington, Virginia.

Getting them covered is just one way that state and local governments are using the health-care overhaul to save money. With U.S. cities facing rising benefit expenses and billions of dollars in unfunded liabilities, municipalities including Detroit and Chicago are planning to move retirees off city rolls and into federal insurance exchanges.

Shackled States

While analysts couldn’t estimate what states and counties could save by getting inmates covered, state and local spending on corrections in 2011 was $73.2 billion, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Prison health-care expenses in 44 states studied by the Philadelphia-based Pew Charitable Trusts increased to $6.5 billion in 2008 from $4.3 billion in 2001, and grew 90 percent or more in 11 states, according to an October report. ..Continued.. by Mark Niquette

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Obamacare Is a Powerful New Crime-Fighting Tool

1-7-2014 National:

An astonishing two-thirds of the 730,000 prisoners released each year have substance abuse or mental health problems. But no one has been willing to pay for their treatment—until now.

Ron Sanders may hold the record for the fastest round trip from and back into jail. Released after a year in a San Francisco county lockup—just one in a series of drug-related sentences he’d served over the years—he headed right back to the streets he knew best. “Four hours after I got out, I got me a 40 [ounce bottle of malt liquor] and a rock of crack,” says Sanders, a wiry African American man with a scar on his forehead and a pair of spotless Nikes on his feet. “Then I turned around, and there was a cop right behind me.” He was back behind bars before the day was over.

Slightly slower-paced versions of Sanders’ story play out every day all across the country. An astonishing two-thirds of the 730,000 men and women released from America’s lockups each year have either substance abuse problems, mental health problems, or both. Very often, those problems were largely responsible for getting them locked up in the first place. Most addicted and mentally ill prisoners receive little or no effective treatment while they’re incarcerated or after they’re turned loose, so it’s little surprise that, like Sanders, they soon wind up back in jail. But for some, that revolving door may stop spinning this year, thanks to a little-noticed side-effect of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Obamacare, it turns out, might be a crime-fighting tool.

Numerous studies support the common-sense notion that treating offenders’ drug addictions and mental illnesses helps keep at least some of them from going back to jail. Get that junkie off heroin, and maybe he won’t steal your car stereo for fix money; get that mentally ill homeless person on proper medications, and maybe she can find a job instead of turning tricks in alleys.

“It’s not the drug itself, it’s the stealing and robbing they do to get the drug,” says Abbie Zimmerman, a therapist at Transitions Clinic, a program based in San Francisco’s hard-bitten Hunter’s Point area that treats former prisoners (including Sanders, who is now an outreach worker there). “If I can keep them sober, I can keep them out of jail.”

But no one has been willing to pay for such treatment for hundreds of thousands of ex-cons. And they certainly can’t afford it themselves: According to a recent report by the Council of State Governments, the vast majority of released prisoners re-enter society with little money and no health insurance. But now many of those former prisoners are eligible for insurance, courtesy of the federal government.

Among many other reforms, the ACA is drastically expanding Medicaid, the federal insurance scheme for the poor. Previously, able-bodied childless adults were generally not covered by Medicaid, regardless of how impoverished they might have been. But starting this year, any American citizen under age 65 with a family income at or below 138 percent of the federal poverty line—about $25,000 for a family of three—is eligible for Medicaid (at least in the two dozen states that have so far agreed to participate in this aspect of Obamacare).

Meanwhile, citizens and legal immigrants earning between 138 percent and 400 percent of the poverty line are now entitled to subsidies to help pay for private insurance. Taken together, those two provisions mean that tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of the inmates released every year are now eligible for health insurance, including coverage for mental health and substance abuse services.

Providing treatment to those former prisoners could yield enormous benefits for all of us. The average cost to incarcerate someone for a year is roughly $25,000. That means if only one percent of each year’s released inmates stay out of trouble, taxpayers will save nearly $200 million annually—and the pool of troubled ex-cons looking to steal your car stereo will be that much smaller.

“Success in implementing the Affordable Care Act has the potential to decrease crime, recidivism, and criminal justice costs, while simultaneously improving the health and safety of communities,” sums up a recent report by the federal Department of Justice. ..Continued.. by Vince Beiser

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Cato Challenges the U.S. Supreme Court to Decide that Congress Doesn’t Have Unlimited Jurisdiction Over Everyone

4-9-2013 Washington DC:

Last year’s partial victory in the Obamacare case is already being applied to new cases reaching the Supreme Court. Recall that, in that case, the Court accepted our argument that the government cannot use the Commerce and Necessary and Proper Clauses to compel someone to purchase health insurance. The Court held that allowing Congress to compel commerce into existence would be an improper use of a great and limitless power. In United States v. Kebodeaux, the Supreme Court will once again address an assertion of power that, if upheld, could give Congress nearly limitless power.

In 1999, Anthony Kebodeaux was sentenced to three years in prison for statutory rape. He served his time, was freed from any post-release parole or probation requirements, and ended his relationship with the federal government in the matter of criminal law. Years later, when Kebodeaux moved intrastate from San Antonio, Texas to El Paso, Texas, he failed to update his change of address within the three-day period as required by the federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) of 2006. Even though Kebodeaux was unconditionally released from custody before SORNA was enacted, he was sentenced to one year in federal prison. The Fifth Circuit overturned his conviction en banc, meaning that every judge on the Fifth Circuit heard the case rather than the traditional three-judge panel. They found the registration requirement unconstitutional because Congress lacked jurisdiction over Kebodeaux after they unconditionally released him from custody.

The government’s arguments to the contrary, the court held, would permit not just “unending criminal authority” over Kebodeaux but unending authority over every American who was once in federal jurisdiction, which is, of course, every American.

In a sense, the government is now arguing for the “Hotel California” theory of jurisdiction: you can check out, but you can never leave.

Yesterday, Cato filed an amicus brief, joined by Ilya Somin, Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law, arguing that it would be improper under the Necessary and Proper Clause to permit Congress to have unending authority over all Americans. Congress already lacks a general power to punish criminals, much less monitor previously released criminals and impose new and onerous restrictions on them at will. Moreover, there is nothing constitutionally special about sex offenders as a class. Congress should not be allowed to designate a sub-class of people within its jurisdiction as “special” and then assert perpetual jurisdiction over them. These type of assertions of power are precisely what the “proper” element of the Necessary and Proper Clause is supposed to protect against–ones that, even if “necessary,” would give Congress unbounded power.

Indeed, if the Court rules in favor of the government’s position, it will give Congress virtually unlimited power to regulate nearly all Americans. In essence, it would justify the gradual imposition of endless new requirements on anyone who had previously been subject to federal jurisdiction. Cumulatively, these federal impositions amount to unlimited federal authority over anyone who has ever been held in federal custody or otherwise in federal jurisdiction. This cannot be a power vested in a Congress with “few and defined” powers. As the Supreme Court held in the Obamacare case, Congress doesn’t have the power to “regulate an individual from cradle to grave.” ..Source.. by Trevor Burrus

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Federal health care law: Now it’s full speed ahead

Obamacare and criminal history??

11-12-2012 National:

Businesses and health insurers are hungry for more direction, but many details haven't been worked out.

With President Obama's victory in hand, it's full steam ahead on implementing the federal health care law.

States face a Friday deadline to say whether they'll build their own heath insurance exchanges in 2014, or else live with a version being designed by the federal government. In a month, they'll need detailed blueprints that show they'll be ready to flip the switch.

Meanwhile, businesses that were sitting on the sidelines now must figure out how to help their workers get insurance.

"The story of this election is that there is nothing anymore that justifies waiting," said Kate Johansen, a lobbyist with the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce.

The work ahead for states is daunting, even for Minnesota, which is ahead of many other states in laying the groundwork for a homegrown exchange. This will be a new online marketplace, required by the Affordable Care Act, to help consumers and small businesses shop for coverage.

A new DFL-led state Legislature portends a less contentious path to creating exchanges and expanding Medicaid benefits to more low-income Minnesotans.

But when lawmakers convene on Jan. 8, they will have just a few months to get up to speed on the most significant regulatory overhaul of the health care system in four decades. ..... ..... .....

Authorization in March

Legislators will need to have a bill in place in March to authorize an exchange so the system will be ready to enroll people in health plans in October. Divisive issues such as how it will be run and financed will have to be worked out, in addition to complex IT matters. The system will need to safeguard sensitive consumer data, as it will verify such information as income, criminal history and legal status.

While the election "ushered in a new reality," discussions already are underway with legislators to get the ball rolling on a bill, said Commissioner Jim Schowalter of Minnesota Management and Budget, whose office will oversee construction of the exchange. ...continued... by JACKIE CROSBY , Star Tribune

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Important Supreme Court precedents that could affect ‘ObamaCare’ decision

And one of the cases is???? A Sex Offender's Case!

3-26-2012 National:

The Supreme Court embarks Monday on a three-day examination of the Affordable Care Act “ObamaCare.” Supreme Court handicappers predict the justices will find a way to rule on the main constitutional question they consider on Day Two: Does the law’s health insurance mandate fall outside the Constitution’s commerce clause, which gives Congress regulatory power only when matters of interstate commerce are involved?

Important precedents in health-care case

McCulloch v. Maryland (1819): A landmark in Supreme Court jurisprudence on the power of Congress. The court ruled unanimously that Congress could establish a national bank.

Wickard v. Filburn (1942): The court unanimously ruled in favor of congressional limits on the amount of wheat a farmer could grow, even if the extra wheat was intended for the farmer’s personal use. The limit was part of a 1938 law aimed at stabilizing wheat prices.

N.Y. v. U.S. (1992): In a 6-3 decision, the court used the commerce clause to uphold two of three provisions of federal law that used incentives to get states to dispose of radioactive waste. New York had objected because residents of remote rural areas protested such disposal.

U.S. v. Lopez (1995): In a San Antonio case involving a youth who was arrested for bringing a gun to school, the Supreme Court for the first time in decades ruled Congress exceeded its commerce clause limits in approving the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990. The vote was 5-4.

U.S. v. Morrison (2000): The court again ruled 5-4 that the commerce clause limits the legislative power of Congress, in this case the 1994 Violence Against Women Act. The same majority as in Lopez (with swing votes from Justices Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O’Connor) said there is no connection to interstate commerce for the statute, which provided a federal court civil remedy for victims of gender-motivated violence.

Gonzales v. Raich (2005): Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia joined the court’s 6-3 majority in ruling that the U.S. government via the commerce clause could enforce federal drug laws in California and other states permitting medical marijuana.

U.S. v. Comstock (2010): The court held the Constitution gives Congress power to enact the Adam Walsh Protection and Safety Act, which authorized civil commitment of convicted sex offenders on the basis of “sexual dangerousness.” Chief Justice John Roberts joined the 7-2 majority. ..Source..

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The impudent tyranny of Harry Reid

A example of a "Poison Pill" type of amendment. Note highlights near end.

12-23-2009 National:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada is proving once again the maxim that darkness hates the light.

Buried in his massive amendment to the Senate version of Obamacare is Reid's anti-democratic poison pill designed to prevent any future Congress from repealing the central feature of this monstrous legislation.

Beginning on page 1,000 of the measure, Section 3403 reads in part: "... it shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection."

In other words, if President Obama signs this measure into law, Reid intends that no future Senate or House will be able to change a single word of Section 3403, regardless whether future Americans or their representatives in Congress wish otherwise.

Note that the subsection at issue here concerns the regulatory power of the Independent Medicare Independent Advisory Board to "reduce the per capita rate of growth in Medicare spending."

That is precisely the kind of open-ended grant of regulatory power that effectively establishes the IMAB as the ultimate arbiter of the cost, quality and quantity of health care to be made available to the American people. And Reid wants the decisions of this group of unelected federal bureaucrats to be untouchable for all time.

No wonder the majority leader tossed aside assurances that senators and the public would have at least 72 hours to study the text of the final Senate version of Obamacare before the critical vote on cloture. And no wonder Reid was so desperate to rush his amendment through the Senate, even scheduling the key tally on it at 1 a.m., while America slept.

True to form, Reid wanted to keep his Section 3403 poison pill secret as long as possible, just as he negotiated his bribes for the votes of Sens. Mary Landrieu, of Louisiana, Ben Nelson, of Nebraska, and Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, behind closed doors.

The final Orwellian touch in this subversion of democratic procedure is found in the ruling of the Reid-controlled Senate parliamentarian that the anti-repeal provision is not a change in Senate rules, but rather of Senate "procedures." Why is that significant?

Because for 200 years, changes in the Senate's standing rules have required approval by two-thirds of those voting, or 67 votes rather than the 60 Reid's amendment received.

Reid has flouted two centuries of standing Senate rules to pass a measure in the dead of night that no senator has read, and part of which can never be changed. If this is not tyranny, then what is? ..Source.. by Examiner Editorial

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